Imprisoned politician Dzmitry Bandarenka driven away from hospital after associates turn out to express support

Dzmitry Bandarenka was driven by unidentified men in plain clothes away from a hospital in Minsk after a group of his associates gathered at the entrance to the institution on Monday morning to express support for the imprisoned opposition politician.

Mr. Bandarenka had just been brought to Minsk City Clinical Hospital No. 5 from the National Prison Hospital for back surgery scheduled to take place the following day when a man in civilian clothes told his wife Volha that the associates must disperse or there would be trouble. "I was inside [the hospital] when they told me that the car with the husband inside had left," Mrs. Bandarenka said.

She said that doctors had almost completed paperwork needed for Mr. Bandarenka's admission to the hospital when he was driven away.

Mr. Bandarenka's right leg is partially paralyzed and he is said to be in constant pain because of four herniated interverbral discs and three trapped spinal nerves.

In a statement issued on July 24, the European Belarus group with which Mr. Bandarenka is affiliated said that the man had been forced to give his written consent to the proposed treatment.

He was told that he had only two options: he would be either operated on or transferred to a prison to serve his sentence; a consultation with a non-staff neurologist was denied to him, the associates said.

On April 27, a district judge in Minsk sentenced Mr. Bandarenka, a former campaign aide to presidential candidate Andrey Sannikaw, to two years in a low-security prison, finding him guilty of organizing disturbances and participating in them in connection with a post-election protest staged in Minsk on December 19, 2010.

In late May, the wife said with reference to a neurologist who had examined Mr. Bandarenka that he might end up in a wheelchair unless he got back surgery. //BelaPAN